Mild Amusement

Ever since I was a kid, I've liked playing with Legos .  I probably spent countless hours of my youth building, tearing apart, and re-building all sorts of cars, airplanes, and spaceships (none of this pansy house-building for me).  I still have a bucket of them sitting in my room, and every time I break them out, I get a little nostalgic.  Besides, it's just plain fun for my inner tinkerer/geek. Technically, these are children's toys.  You don't want babies near them, because they might swallow the pieces; children of about three years old, though, can usually handle the whole concept.  And coincidentally, there just so happen to be kids of that age floating around my house at times.  Most of the time, I just help them build stuff that they're working on.  Sometimes they still have trouble with snapping together pieces, so I help with that.  Other times, they don't understand how gravity works, so I help to provide structural support to their c...

When I'm in the city, I tend to take public transportation.  It's often easier to just hop on a bus rather than deal with the hassle, and cost, of parking.  Also, the public transportation system in the city isn't half bad, so it works out fairly well. Well, on one of these occasions, I was riding on the N Judah train.  The train had just pulled up to the Church & Duboce stop, so we were no longer underground at that point.  However, the Sunset Tunnel (also called East Portal) was coming up, so we were just about to go back "underground" for a brief moment. Well, that was the plan, at least.  Instead, the train just sat there for a little bit.  It was a little odd, but it's been known to happen.  After about thirty seconds, the conductor of the train got on the PA system to make an announcement, "there is police activity up ahead, so we will be waiting here a few minutes."  Now, this isn't exactly a common occurrence when one rides on the...

The other night, I was hanging out with my old college room mates.  We were going to head to dinner, but one of them wanted to stop by an "event" that his local comic book store was holding.  They were showing a little bit of art and serving wine & cheese, so we figured it couldn't hurt to add a little bit of culture to the evening.  Also, I've been known to buy a comic book or two on occasion, so I wasn't exactly opposed to the idea. As I was leaving the house far earlier that morning, I threw on my Green Lantern t-shirt .  My brother & his wife got me that shirt for Christmas, and I figured it'd be appropriate given the evening's activities.  I'll probably end up wearing that shirt just for kicks on plenty of other occasions, but I figured I'd get a few more kicks if I wore that night. Funnily enough, I came surprisingly close to getting kicks because of that shirt. My friends and I (there were 5 of us) were walking somewhere after ...

I like to listen to, among other things, rap.  I can't exactly tell you why I like it (why do you like your favorite color, for example?), but there is an art to it that I find appealing.  Sometimes, someone tells a compelling story, a la Mike Shinoda : My brother had a book he would hold with pride A little red cover with a broken spine On the back he hand wrote a quote inside "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die" Or sometimes, there's a clever phrase or set of words that can be funny (this one comes from Roscoe ): I got five fingers, it ain't no riddle Why the only one showin is the one in the middle Either way, there's skill involved in putting together verses that end up rhyming.  The artists/rapper/lyricist person puts together sentences that happen to rhyme, and those sentences actually meaning something. Put it this way: it is possible to put punctuation marks that actually make sense in a verse that's well crafted. Wel...

It's time for another installation of amusing things that little kids say.  As the title implies, there have been three previous installments ( one , two , and three ), and they're pretty darn close to verbatim transcripts of conversations I have had myself or witnessed. As always, I'm not making fun of or insulting little kids.  One, that'd be mean.  Two, there's no sport in that.  Three, and quite possibly most importantly, some of them show signs of being really bright, and I don't want any of them to have reason to hold a grudge should he or she take over the world.  Really, some of the things they say are just funny because they have that incredibly unique perspective of the world that only little kids have. So with my rambling out of the way, here are several more reasons why little kids are awesome: Me: "Did you have a good Christmas?" Kid: "Yes" Me: "How come?" Kid: "I got to open LOTS of presents!" Tha...

I tend to do a good amount of shopping online, so I have crossed paths with Amazon on more than one occasion.  And in the process of doing said online shopping, I have noticed that I confuse the heck out of its recommendation system . Now, I get that I have slightly eclectic tastes.  I have a "quirky" sense of humor, and half the time, I am constantly astounded at what is popular in the mainstream.  I find that the radio is a good example of this; I routinely switch the station every couple of songs or so because I just don't like what's playing.  Put it this way, a friend of mine pointed out that a good number of current/recent female artists on the music charts sounded like they were drunk (Ke$ha is a great example of this), and I simply nodded in agreement. Anyhow, I get that even if everything worked perfectly, Amazon would probably have a hard time making suggestions that I would actually heed.  But, to make things worse, I often buy gifts or order thi...